Waiting
by Eienvine
Summary: For eight long years, she has believed that if she tries long enough and hard enough . . . A rather moody reflection on Eames' thoughts postUnthethered.


This is the result of me feeling tired and disenfranchised, as well as really sorry for Eames; if you think about it, she has been getting the shaft from Bobby quite a bit in the last two seasons. I know he has his reasons, and I know she knows he has his reasons, but I imagine that she still sometimes gets irritated about it. So this is my interpretation of the thoughts she might have on the subject, if she were also feeling tired and disenfranchised, and possibly a little sorry for herself.

* * *

She's not staring at her cell phone anymore. It's useless, after all—not matter how long she looks at it, it never rings, at least not when she wants it to. Oh, Bobby calls, sometimes, but only when he needs something specific from her: for instance, when he's getting himself thrown in jail and needs to make sure someone knows where he is so he doesn't get stuck there. At soon as she springs him from that horrible place, though, he's gone again, suspended from work, never answering his phone, never returning her calls. For all she knows he's dead somewhere. The thought is terrifying, but she's been fruitlessly worrying about him for so many years now that familiarity has taken some of the edge off the worry. It's all a dull ache now—the worry and the fear and the endless, constant rejection. 

_Ay, and there's the rub,_ she thinks to herself as she leaves the cursed cell phone on her living room table and walks into the kitchen, past the Christmas tree and the pile of presents she picked up shopping that morning. It's not just the worry—it's the rejection. Some selfish part of her mind that is annoyed he didn't feel the need to call her, to let her know that he's all right, that he's still him, that he cares about her. She put herself and her job on the line for him; the least he could do, she can't help but feel, is call her every now and then. She doesn't want to feel that way—doesn't want her support for him to be conditional, because she feels that's shallow—but as the years go by it gets harder and harder to be altruistic, to constantly give and get nothing in return.

Oh, they're friends now, of course, much better friends than she ever would have expected them to become, and she knows that in his own way, Bobby cares very deeply about her and needs her presence in his life. She feels the same way about him. But there's a fundamental difference in how the two view their relationship: for her, he's more than a partner or even a friend. He's family, like another brother to her, and when she needs help and comfort and understanding she's just as likely to call him as she is to call her real family. She sees family as more a spiritual than a biological bond, and she and her partner have that bond with each other.

Her partner, she has come to realize more and more, feels differently. Of course she is important to him, and when there is no one else—which is what usually happens—he comes to her. But put a blood relative in front of him, any blood relative, and he's gone, dropping her like an unwanted bit of garbage. First there was Frank, and then his mother, and now his nephew, for whom he has quite literally gone off the deep end. She marvels at his dedication to family, but at the same time she finds it irritating. Completely forgetting about the world around him when his mother was dying—that, she understands. It wasn't the woman's fault that she was the way she was; there was no blame to be had there. But the brother, and now the nephew . . . it really kills her. Frank had made no effort to contact his brother, and when the two found each other at that soup kitchen, he made every effort to avoid seeing Bobby again, preferring to slip back into the filth to which he had grown accustomed. And Bobby's nephew—his nephew is a total stranger to him. And yet for them he would drop anything. He would drop work. He would drop her. And that is what hurts: she has stood faithfully by his side for eight years; his family abandoned him. And yet, just for a chance to be near them, he blows her off. For Bobby, biological ties trump emotional ones every time.

For eight long years, she has believed that if she tries long enough and hard enough, he will come to regard her in the way that she does him. She no longer believes this is true. Now, standing at her kitchen window, staring out and wondering where her partner is, she admits to herself that Bobby is still in many ways a little boy, waiting for his mother's love, for his brother's approval, for his father to come home. She is a good friend, but she is not the family he lost, so she will never be quite good enough for him. She is not upset or even surprised by this realization. She is simply resigned. Bobby is her partner, and her friend, and she will continue to stand by him, even though she understands that he will not always stand by her.

But still, today something has snapped. She has given up, without quite meaning to. She walks back into the living room and turns her cell phone off.

* * *


End file.
